In the last 20 or so years, the number of light trucks and SUVs on the road has just absolutely blown up (if you hadn’t noticed), with many of those trucks taking over the daily drive, commuter, and family-hauler, grocery-getter duties that used to be taken up by sedans, minivans and (years ago) station wagons. In the automotive tire sector, all-season tires take up 84 percent of all tire sales, and for good reason. All-season tires are versatile and capable – you can rely on them for year-round traction, a quiet and forgiving ride, great wear properties with generous limited manufacturer’s tread life coverage, stable straight-line road manners, and handling that is precise and predictable.
With that in mind, you can think of highway-terrain tires like the Ironman Radial A/P as being the light truck or SUV equivalent of automotive all-season tires, except with beefed-up construction to easily handle the extra weight of a truck and any towing or hauling duties that might come with it. The Ironman Radial A/P is a tire that comes in at an affordable price but delivers performance, value, and features that are more in line with what you’d expect from a much more expensive premium tire. It’s a tire that’s capable of punching far above its weight class, so let’s go in for a closer look with this Ironman Radial A/P tire review:
Features and Benefits
Here are some of the design features and innovations that make the Ironman Radial A/P a great performer and a great value:
- Durable construction with multi-ply internal design details and a long-wearing, damage-resistant tread formulation
- All-season tread is designed with deep circumferential grooves and an extra-dense network of sipes to multiply the tread’s surface area and traction with hundreds of thin biting edges that slice through standing water, slush, snow
- Computer-aided harmonic tread block placement neutralizes certain frequencies and overtones for a quiet and serene ride on the highway
- Five-rib tread pattern with aggressive tread blocks, and lateral and angled grooves for year-round traction
- Covered by Ironman with a 35,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty
- Continuous center rib gives the Ironman Radial A/P solid straight-line stability and steering response that’s light and direct
- Shoulder blocks are reinforced for improved cornering, reducing deformation and tread squirm during hard maneuvers and encouraging even tread wear
- Select sizes feature an outlined white letter sidewall that looks great on a wide variety of light trucks and SUVs
- Footprint is optimized to put the most rubber in contact with the road for enhanced handling, braking, traction
Pros and Cons
In the case of the Ironman Radial A/P, this is a tire that has far more Pros than it does Cons:
PROS:
- Low noise on the highway
- Reliable traction on wet roads or dry
- Handling is accurate and predictable
- Ride quality is refined, with little vibration or harshness being transmitted to passengers
CONS:
- Not good off-road
- Not good in heavier snow
- Ride can be a little firm on some pavement surfaces
SimpleTire’s view on Ironman Radial A/P tires
Are you acquainted with SimpleTire’s SimpleScore system? SimpleScore is the ratings method that our team devised to give you a quick at-a-glance way to get an idea of any tire’s strengths and weaknesses. We look at the tire’s technical details, the spec sheet, manufacturer info, customer reviews, and other data points, and then we distill all that to a 1-10 numerical value for the categories of traction, handling, and longevity, as well as an overall average SimpleScore. For the Ironman Radial A/P, the SimpleScore numbers look like this:
Ironman Radial A/P
- Traction: 7.7
- Handling: 7.8
- Longevity: 7.4
- Overall average SimpleScore: 7.6
The driving experience with the Ironman Radial A/P shows few vices; its straight-line stability is solid and sedate, but not to the point of being sluggish; steering response is light and direct, with accurate handling from driver inputs. Driver feedback and road feel are equally good without ever becoming jittery or over-sensitive, and cornering ability is predictable and precise (if maybe not up to the kind of cornering you’d expect from a performance tire).
On wet roads, the Ironman performs admirably with little tendency toward hydroplaning, and the dense strategically-designed network of sipes gives it an enhanced level of traction on snowy or slushy pavement. Granted, the Ironman doesn’t perform well in several inches of snow and doesn’t have the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake certification for severe winter service, but then again that’s not really the kind of driving that highway-terrain or all-season tires are designed for.
Customer reviews on SimpleTire’s site indicate that the Ironman Radial A/P is a great fit for bigger pickup trucks and is very capable when it comes to towing or hauling heavy loads. With a combination of year-round performance, ride and noise levels that are comparable to passenger Grand Touring tires, handling that is accurate and composed, and a decent limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty, we can recommend the Ironman Radial A/P without reservation for any driver who’s looking for highway-terrain tires for a truck or SUV but doesn’t want to break the bank to do so.
Vehicles the Ironman Radial A/P is a good replacement tire for
The Radial A/P from Ironman isn’t featured as OEM on any trucks, but it would make a great replacement tire for light trucks, SUVs, and crossovers such as:
- Ford Explorer
- Ford Expedition
- Ford Escape
- Ford F150/F250
- Chevrolet Silverado 1500/2500
- GMC Sierra 2500
- Buick Encore
- Buick Enclave
- Chevrolet Uplander
- Chevrolet Suburban
- Chevrolet Tahoe
- RAM 1500/2500
- Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Jeep Wagoneer
- Toyota Tundra
- TOyota Tacoma
- Honda PIlot
- Honda Ridgeline
- Honda CR-V
- Toyota 4Runner
- Nissan Pathfinder
- Nissan Titan
- BMW X5
- Chevrolet Traverse
- Dodge Journey
- Ford Edge
- Genesis GV70
- Honda Pilot
- Hyundai Tucson
- Jaguar F-Pace
- Jeep Grand Cherokee
- Lexus RX350
- Mazda CX-7
- Nissan Rogue
- Tesla Model X
- Toyota RAV4
- Volkswagen Taos
